The Israeli army is carrying out a “targeted” operation against Hamas on Wednesday in the al-Chifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip where thousands of people are crowded but which remains considered a strategic military site of the Islamist movement by Israel and the United States. “The Israeli Defense Forces are carrying out a targeted and precision operation against Hamas in a specific area of the al-Shifa hospital,” the army said early Wednesday in a statement in English, as the war started by Hamas attack on October 7 entered its 40th day.
The Israeli army has on site “medical teams and Arabic-speaking people who have been trained specifically for this sensitive and complex environment, with the aim of ensuring that no harm is caused to civilians used by Hamas as human shields” , she added without specifying her targets. A senior Hamas administration official told AFP he saw “tanks” and “commandos” in the hospital complex.
“I am in the hospital and I see dozens of soldiers and commandos in the emergency room and at the reception and there are tanks that have entered the hospital complex,” Youssef Abul Reesh told AFP , a senior official in the Hamas government’s Ministry of Health, calling on the UN and the international community to intervene “immediately” to put an end to this operation.
Thousands of people crowd into the hospital
Several thousand people, sick, staff and civilians displaced by the war, crowded onto the site of the al-Chifa hospital, which was surrounded by the Israeli army. The hospital director said at least “179 bodies” were buried in a mass grave on Tuesday. “There are bodies littering the aisles of the hospital complex and the refrigerated rooms of the morgues are no longer supplied” with electricity, Mohammed Abou Salmiya told AFP, before the Israeli operation in this hospital in central Gaza. city.
During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip indicated that it had been notified by the Israeli army of its intention to carry out an operation in this hospital at the heart of the conflict between Hamas and the Israeli army. . “We hold the occupation (name given by Hamas to Israel, editor’s note), the international community, the United States entirely responsible for the safety of the thousands of members of the medical teams, injured, displaced in the compound. guard against a massacre at the hospital,” the ministry said.
The war was sparked on October 7 by a Hamas attack of a scale and violence not seen since the creation of Israel in 1948. In retaliation, Israel vowed to “annihilate” the Islamist movement, in power in Gaza. The army has relentlessly pounded the small, besieged Palestinian territory and launched a ground operation on October 27.
“Green light” from Washington?
The Israeli army believes that the al-Chifa hospital houses strategic Hamas infrastructure, which it says uses the population as “human shields”.
Building on assertions from its Israeli ally, the White House assured Tuesday that Hamas and the other Palestinian Islamist group Islamic Jihad had “a command and control center from al-Chifa hospital.” “The White House and Pentagon’s embrace of the occupation’s false narrative that the resistance is using the al-Shifa medical complex for military purposes has given the occupation a green light to commit more massacres against civilians “, affirmed Hamas, classified “terrorist” by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
“Hospitals and patients must be protected,” responded a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, saying he did not want to comment on the ongoing Israeli operation but assuring that Washington was opposed to “exchanges of shooting in a hospital where innocent, destitute, sick people were seeking care.”
For Israel, this operation in a hospital does not violate international law. “We have repeatedly indicated that the continued use of al-Chifa hospital for military purposes by Hamas will lead to the end of its protection under international law,” the Hamas spokesperson said. Israeli army Daniel Hagari shortly before the operation.
The Israeli army said it had “informed the relevant authorities in Gaza that all military activities within the hospital had to cease within 12 hours” but that this “unfortunately had not been the case”.
March for the hostages
Since the start of the war, Israeli bombings have killed 11,320 people, mostly civilians, including 4,650 children, according to the Hamas health ministry. On the Israeli side, around 1,200 people were massacred in the Hamas attack, the vast majority civilians, according to the Israeli authorities. And some 240 hostages were kidnapped and brought back to Gaza, according to the army.
The Forum of Families of Hostages and Disappeared demanded in a statement that the government “approves an agreement (Tuesday) evening to bring home all the hostages from Gaza.” About a hundred relatives of hostages, their portraits printed on black T-shirts, had started a 63-kilometer walk from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, to Mr. Netanyahu’s office.
Official Egyptian sources told a television close to the security services that the head of Mossad, Israeli intelligence, was in Cairo “to discuss a humanitarian truce and the issue of the exchange of prisoners.”
On Sunday, the Israeli Prime Minister raised the possibility of an agreement to release hostages. But Hamas later accused Israel of “procrastinating” over the release. “I want to tell the leaders and decision-makers: we have lost our patience. We want our families and loved ones to return now,” said Merav Leshem Gonen, a hostage mother.